


12-How It Begins Again

by WritestuffLee



Series: The Warrior's Heart, Volume 4, The Long Shadow [12]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, M/M, PWP, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-08
Updated: 2007-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obi-Wan makes some significant progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	12-How It Begins Again

At first glance, Qui-Gon assumes their rooms are empty. The bond is quiet and full of Obi-Wan’s warmth and taste, which has gradually changed over the past several tens from a bitterness like scorched iron to its more usual sweet tea—but there is nothing to indicate his whereabouts or occupation. So Qui-Gon makes no special effort to be quiet in taking off his boots or divesting himself of the paraphernalia Jedi masters in teaching rotation generally carry about. It is only as his datapad slides from his fingers to clatter onto the table beside the sofa that he sees—over the back—the body sprawled face-down on it, features hidden by a fall of red-gold hair, and the kindred datapad fallen from a hand still encased in splints and mesh.

The red-gold mop stirs a little and a grumbling sound issues from somewhere beneath it. Qui-Gon kneels before the sofa, glances at the fallen datapad before placing it on the table beside his own, and searches for human features beneath the thick curtain of hair. Not immediately finding any, he gently sweeps it aside, revealing Obi-Wan’s face. His partner blinks sleepily and smiles.

“Sorry, love. I didn’t realize you were here napping. I see Jocasta loaded you up with some dense material. Is that what put you to sleep?”

“I’m afraid—so.” His reply is punctuated by a yawn. “Very boring bunch, Jedi philosophers. No, don’t stop, that feels nice.”

Qui-Gon continues running his fingers through the younger man’s hair, enjoying the silky feel of it himself. “It’s getting long. You’ll be wanting to tie it back soon. Or trim it.”

“Mm-hm,” Obi-Wan agrees, closing his eyes.

“Which one are you reading?”

“What? Oh, I started out with my esteemed ancestor—the Kirtan told me there was a rather large body of his work in library. He seems to have been a reactionary old cuss.” Obi-Wan shifts a little to encourage his master to expand his activities.

“Age can do that. How old was he?”

“In his forties,” comes the reply, coupled with a mischievous smile, “when he wrote this.”

Qui-Gon ignores the bait. “Not so old then. What makes you say he was a reactionary?” He moves his hand down the back of Obi-Wan’s neck and sifts upward through his hair from there, massaging the scalp a little. Obi-Wan sighs quietly and relaxes a little deeper into the cushions.

“He had somewhat old-fashioned ideas about the Force, that it’s not just something like gravity or electromagnetism but—”

“The source of the fundamental forces that bind all matter, yes?” Obi-Wan makes an affirmative noise that can just as easily be taken as a sign of pleasure. Qui-Gon has moved to lightly rubbing his back in slow circles through his thin shirt. “That is rather old fashioned, but not entirely discredited. I believe it only fell out of vogue after the Great Schism.”

“Mmm-hmm. Too hard to reconcile the Light and the Dark, as well as the Living and Unifying facets of the Force.”

“And what’s your opinion of your namesake’s philosophy?”

“Mmmm, that feels lovely, Qui. Don’t stop,” he murmurs, half asleep again. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked what you thought of Master Kenobi’s philosophy,” Qui-Gon whispers in the young man’s ear before planting a kiss just below it.

“Uh, er, I haven’t read very far yet, actually. And that’s very distracting. Whatever you’re doing. Yes, that. Very difficult to think about philosophy when, uh, mmmmm . . .”

Qui-Gon’s hand has found its way beneath the thin shirt and is moving in slow sweeps over the soft skin, from the middle of his back to his waist, as though smoothing an animal’s fur. At the bottom of one such sweep, Qui-Gon leans down again and whispers, “If we take this off, I can reach more,” and places another kiss on a patch of skin at his waist.

“Yes. All right.” Obi-Wan’s voice is a little breathy—whether from arousal or fear Qui-Gon can’t tell as he slowly pushes the shirt up, then eases it over his head and off his arms. The younger man tucks his injured hands under the cushion beneath his head and waits for whatever his master chooses to do next.

Presented with an expanse of pale skin divided by a shallow furrow of spine, and that beautifully marked with the characters for passion and serenity, Qui-Gon hardly knows where to begin again. His own monogram in green and gold shyly peeps out from beneath the waistband of Obi-Wan’s trousers.

It’s been a very long time since he’s been allowed this luxury of sight and touch, and he has missed it.

Obi-Wan’s body has been a minefield since his last mission. Sometimes a touch elicits pleasure, but more often a startle reaction and a flood of fear through the bond, occasionally followed by a flashback. Thankfully, those have almost entirely receded now that his testimony is over, now that he has remembered and begun to understand what happened to him and put it behind him. But fear, once taught, dies hardest in the body, whatever the logical synapses of the brain tell it.

Qui-Gon sweeps aside the fringes of hair curling down over the back of Obi-Wan’s neck and lays another kiss there, watching eyelids flutter as he does so. The one corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth that he can see is curved upward in a slight smile. A good sign.

He lays his palms over Obi-Wan’s shoulder blades and draws them downward lightly, thumbs meeting over the younger man’s backbone, passing over the blue Danjii characters with a caress. That elicits a little shiver and the disappearance of the smile. The marks have been a source of disquietude for Obi-Wan since they betrayed his identity to his torturer, and his feelings about them are understandably mixed. Qui-Gon thinks he should have them removed, but he seems reluctant to do so. Having made them in a desperate time, Qui-Gon traces them now in pleasure with his lips, breathing warmly over the pale skin they rise from, his hands sweeping up over Obi-Wan’s ribs.

The younger man’s gymnast body is filling out once more in this later stage of his convalescence. Still unable to spar, he’s begun running and swimming again, the latter late at night when the pool is empty of most but Mon Cals. As a result, his shoulders have broadened out enough to make a pleasantly tapering silhouette down to his narrow waist. Bant often joins him in the pool, though he says they meditate together more often than they chase each other the way they did as padawans and creche-mates. He can hold his breath now for a startling length of time. _For a human_ , Bant would qualify in her surprisingly dry teasing tone.

Obi-Wan’s breath has a little hitch in it now, as Qui-Gon’s lips pass over the character for passion, then for serenity and move southward. He would miss these testimonies to their devotion, but it is so obvious that they are hardly necessary. And Qui-Gon has begun to think it would be better if his lover were free of them. He’s a young man yet, not quite 30, Qui-Gon more than twice his age. Some day, those marks will only be a broken link in the chain of their life together. Not the most felicitous metaphor, perhaps, but apt.

He works his way up again, still moving his hands in gentle sweeps up and down Obi-Wan’s back. When his mouth reaches Obi-Wan’s neck again, he detours up behind one ear, then down across one shoulder to the join of arm and torso. Obi-Wan squirms a little in ticklishness but doesn’t protest.

“I’ve missed this,” he admits instead. “I hadn’t realized how much. I miss your hands on me.”

“Do you want more?”

“Yes. Just . . . take it slow.”

“Tell me when to stop. If you don’t like something.”

“I will,” he agrees, but Qui-Gon wonders if it will be in time. He’ll have to be careful. The last thing he wants is to trigger some newly ingrained reaction. He realizes he’s been trained to fear as much as Obi-Wan has. _We’ll both begin again, then,_ he thinks.

For a while, he does little more than run his hands over Obi-Wan’s back, occasionally leaning down to touch a spot with his lips, or sprinkle an area with kisses. His younger partner seems mesmerized, immersed in the moment, in his own pleasure, which is just what Qui-Gon wants. His hands stray a little lower on the downsweep and several fingers slip beneath his waistband.

Obi-Wan is suddenly full of tension, the muscles in his back that Qui-Gon has been loosening until they are as pliable as rubber go stiff as steel. Qui-Gon stops and waits, fingers of one hand remaining tucked beneath the waistband, fingertips of the other just grazing the skin of Obi-Wan’s back in a glacially slow glide. Up. Down. And slowly, Obi-Wan relaxes again, sinking back into the cushions. “Don’t stop,” he whispers.

They have, before, at about this point. There have been several false starts down this road that ended in anger, or fear, or flashback or all three, turning to disappointment and a sense of failure afterwards. Qui-Gon fears that dead end again.

“Please,” Obi-Wan breathes. “Please.” He rolls onto his side, face determined, and reaches for the fastenings of his pants with splinted fingers.

“Let me,” Qui-Gon says, and gently moves his hands aside. The fastenings part easily for him and Obi-Wan lifts his hip off the sofa. His trousers slide off a little awkwardly and Qui-Gon folds them and puts them on the table. By then, Obi-Wan has turned back onto his stomach, wearing nothing but his small clothes. The curve of his muscular buttocks beneath the clingy cloth is tantalizing, even clenched as they are.

With a wince and little shake of his head, Qui-Gon resumes his careful glide of fingertips, just barely touching the skin. The years of experience with skittish and frightened creatures might pay off, finally, with the person who has put up with his adoption of strays for so long. Bit by bit, the tension goes out of Obi-Wan again and he shifts from lying with his chin on the pillow to resting one cheek on it and closing his eyes. Palms open and fingers relaxed, Qui-Gon lets his hands smooth over him from shoulder to ankle in a slow sweep, then starts again at the top.

For minutes that’s all he does. When he finally ventures another kiss, he plants it between Obi-Wan’s shoulders and lingers there, sprinkling little pecks in the same small spot and then slowly creeping downward. He traces the sign for passion first with a stream of air, which elicits the expected shiver and a tentative chuckle; then with his lips, drawing out a contented “mmmm”; then his tongue. Obi-Wan gasps at the sensation of the wet line left on his back, and goes up on his elbows. He shudders hard and his head drops again as Qui-Gon draws another line with his tongue. The third line pulls a whimper from him and the final short lick a moan. He begins to tremble. It’s as though Qui-Gon has kindled a fire that caught in an unexpected _woosh!_

Qui-Gon moves down. The character for serenity is rounder, more complex, and Qui-Gon repeats the process carefully with it: the stream of air, his lips, the point of his tongue like a brush. “Yes,” Obi-Wan breathes, voice catching in another little moan. “Yes, yes. Keep going.”

So he does, down the curve of Obi-Wan’s back to the top of his monogram, the horizontal lines of his first initials parallel to the waist of Obi-Wan’s small clothes. He pushes the band of those down a little and traces the green-and-gold script the same way: air, lips, tongue. This is a particularly sensitive spot for Obi-Wan, which is why these initials are nestled here in the V of flesh above the split in his buttocks. Qui-Gon rubs his beard over it and hears a low whine start in Obi-Wan’s throat.

The noises are good, but not what he would have made before. Qui-Gon misses his lover’s very vocal enjoyment of the body’s pleasures. But he’s heard those same sounds in Obi-Wan’s flashbacks and nightmares and understands why he’s reluctant to give voice to pleasure when it sounds so much like pain.

He’s quiet now, but panting a little, mesmerized again by what Qui-Gon is making him feel. And again he rolls over suddenly, one arm reaching out. “Qui, take me to bed.” His voice has gone husky and there’s a taste of spice in the bond. Another good sign.

And Qui-Gon scoops him up like he’s twelve with a little help from the Force, for this is a very solid young man more than twice that age, and Qui-Gon is not so young as he once was. Size can only compensate for so much, he has come to realize, when the joints have begun to creak. Obi-Wan’s arms go around his neck and in a few long and eager strides they are in their bedroom, a place once Qui-Gon’s alone, off-limits to his padawan.

But Obi-Wan is no longer his padawan. Almost two years knighted now, his lover for nearly seven. He lays Obi-Wan down in the center of the big bed they share and is pulled down into a kiss, open-mouthed and eager and a little sloppy, as he climbs onto the high bed beside his lover, still fully clothed. Obi-Wan wants to kiss him; the removal of clothing can wait.

Everything he remembers is there in his lover’s mouth: the taste of tea and the bite of spice, that agile tongue pushing into his own mouth, claiming him hungrily. And something that has been missing in their chaste goodnight and good-morning kisses: the heat of desire.

Qui-Gon runs his hand lightly over ribs and hip and thigh and up again, lying on his side with the other arm between Obi-Wan’s shoulder and the pillows, cradling him close. Obi-Wan’s hands are against his chest, fumbling at the cloth there. He breaks the kiss impatiently.

“Off. Get these off. Now.”

Qui-Gon obliges gladly. He rolls away and whips his belt off, plucks off his socks, unwinds the sash and drops it atop the growing pile. Tunics come off in a piece over his head and land in a crumpled heap. He hesitates for a moment, thumbs in his waistband, and looks back over his shoulder at Obi-Wan, who’s watching him with a long-absent hunger. “Everything?”

“Everything.”

Trousers and small clothes come off in one smooth, undulating motion, joining the pile on the floor, and Qui-Gon rolls back again, reaching for his lover. Obi-Wan, meanwhile, has managed to wriggle out of his small clothes, despite the splints on his hands. They slide together, intertwining legs as their mouths meet again. Obi-Wan feels feverish in his arms, but he’s not yet hard. Qui-Gon is.

There is the slightest moment of hesitation when their bodies come together. It’s this moment Qui-Gon fears, the moment when Obi-Wan starts to believe he cannot perform, that he is still “dead inside,” as he’s put it before. “Kiss me,” Qui-Gon says, pulling him close before he can begin to think.

Obi-Wan’s response is aggressive, almost feral. Their teeth clash. But shortly, the kiss turns leisurely and affectionate, the hunger toning down, the fever leaving Obi-Wan’s body. After a few more nips and pecks, they break apart again. The moment is still brittle, but salvageable.

“Wait here,” Qui-Gon says, and extricates himself from their embrace. Obi-Wan props himself up on an elbow curiously. He offers a sly, lopsided smile when Qui-Gon comes back into the room holding one of his calligraphy brushes. This one is wide—more than a handspan—and made of soft animal hair for applying washes.

“What are you plotting, Master Jinn?”

“Something quite pleasant, I promise. Lie down.”

A slight hesitation and Obi-Wan obeys, letting himself down off his elbow onto his back. He nestles into the pillows as Qui-Gon climbs up and kneels between his legs. Obi-Wan watches warily, his body once more full of tension. Qui-Gon leans over and kisses him gently, teasing his lips apart and slipping his tongue between them to play. When he feels those lips curve up in a smile, he leans back again. “Relax,” he murmurs against them, reaching for the brush and sweeping it down over the younger man’s chest while his attention is on Qui-Gon’s mouth.

“Oh . . .” he breathes against Qui-Gon’s lips. “Nice.”

Qui-Gon leans back then, and with the concentration he gives his calligraphy, “paints” his lover’s body with long sweeps of the brush, from shoulder to ankle, as he had with his hands. He swirls carefully around each nipple as though creating a pattern, and back and forth over his navel. Obi-Wan squirms and laughs as the tension oozes from him. Qui-Gon draws a line with the edge of the brush down the join of leg and torso, then down each leg in short, quick dabs—the same motion he would use to cover a rough surface thoroughly. He runs the flat of the brush up over Obi-Wan’s instep and down over the sole, making his feet flex, then draws it up the inside of his leg and back down the other, giving him a thorough “coat.” Obi-Wan shivers when he stops.

“What—”

“Shhh. Just feel.”

He starts on a second “coat,” but punctuates it with kisses. He brushes around Obi-Wan’s nipples again, then leans down and laves them with his tongue, sucking a little until they are hard little pebbles. He watches the quick rise and fall of breath in his lover’s chest with satisfaction, then draws a line down the center of the lightly defined abdominal muscles and circles his navel. He dips into this with the brush, as though it were an inkwell, and then with his tongue. Only now does he feather the brush over Obi-Wan’s cock and scrotum.

“Qui—oh gods. . .”

In that small, breathy exclamation is a large victory. Obi-Wan is quivering with arousal, his cock filling and rising. Qui-Gon isn’t sure how long it’s been since his lover has had an erection, but it’s been nearly a quarteryear since they last made love. And Obi-Wan is reaching for him now.

“I want to touch you,” he murmurs, his fingers flexing slightly in their splints like some odd, multi-legged creatures.

Qui-Gon moves closer. “What’s stopping you? Your fingertips are bare again.”

“So they are,” Obi-Wan agrees. He rakes them lightly over Qui-Gon’s ribs: an odd sensation, part callus, part fingernail, part something harder where the splints touch him, something between tickle and scratch. It makes him shiver and makes Obi-Wan smile. In retaliation, he rubs his beard over one of Obi-Wan’s nipples, lightly at first and then with more pressure as he arches up into the touch.

Obi-Wan squirms beneath him.“Stop! Stop, Qui. Wait. I’m going to run my hands into your hair without thinking and then it’ll be a fine mess, all tangled in the mesh and splints.”

Qui-Gon leans over him, arms on either side, hair falling in a thick and tempting curtain, courting disaster. “I could braid it back.”

“Not enough of it to be safe. And I want to feel it on my skin.”

“I could . . . restrain you. With the Force. Or something else.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes widen, showing white around them, but his pupils expand as well. “Your old robe’s tie,” he whispers raggedly, shivering. “Not too tight though.”

Obi-Wan appropriated the garment in question long ago, after replacing it with a new silk one, and it lies across the bench at the foot of their bed beside Qui-Gon’s newer one. He pulls the wide, soft tie from the old one and threads it through the spindles of the headboard. Watching his lover for signs of incipient panic, he raises Obi-Wan’s arms over his head and makes a single loop around each of his wrists. A quick twist will free him instantly but still holds his hands away from Qui-Gon’s tempting hair. Beneath him, Obi-Wan is panting lightly.

“You’re all right?”

“I think so.”

“Give me a safe word.”

“Philosophy,” he grins.

Qui-Gon laughs. Amused but unconvinced, he pauses for a moment.

“Let’s see what happens, Qui. It’s either this or we’ll wind up having to cut your hair from my splints. Or my splints from your hair.” He tugs experimentally on the loops.

“Very well.” It is not the kind of restraint he would have tied before, but it will do. Obi-Wan lies beneath him in a fine sweat, shoulders straining a little until Qui-Gon tucks a pillow beneath them.

“Now if you’d like to pick up where you left off?”

“Here?” Qui-Gon says, rubbing his chin lightly across Obi-Wan’s sensitized nipple again, meaning to make him forget he is bound.

“Oh, yes! Yes,” he sighs, wriggling like a fish on a line.

Qui-Gon touches the bond between them, but it is warm and bright, full of a quiet arousal, tasting of spice. He closes his mouth on the little nub of flesh again and sucks but doesn’t bite. He moves to the other one instead, letting the friction and roughness of his beard and the heat and suction of his mouth substitute for anything rougher. It still leaves Obi-Wan writhing and sighing, and that’s what he wants. He goes back for another kiss then, and nips softly at the open mouth he is offered, leaving the lips swollen and red and tender. He suckles the lower one briefly and then licks the sweat from Obi-Wan’s neck. Moving down, he catches his beard in the light thatch of hair on Obi-Wan’s chest, and gives a quick swipe with his chin to either nipple again before licking down over his belly to his navel.

Once again, he plunges his tongue into the little cup then covers it with his mouth and sucks there, too, tasting sweat and smelling the ripening pong of pre-cum not far from his nose. Beneath him, Obi-Wan is quieter than usual, almost passive—not silent, but subdued, as though holding back, though the bond says otherwise. He whimpers and pants, struggling in his bonds not with fear but with pleasure.

But between them are the ghosts of those sounds and signs of pleasure that are not too different from the sounds of agony and terror. Perhaps not different enough. Qui-Gon thinks—and has said more than once—that Obi-Wan sounds as if he were being tortured when they make love. Perhaps he thinks so too, now.

Wanting to push that thought away, he leans back and runs his hands upwards from Obi-Wan’s waist, spanning his body with his broad palms and large, blunt fingers, then running them lightly up each arm to the bound wrists. He retraces his path with eyes closed, pulling energy downwards into Obi-Wan’s middle, toward his groin, until his arms go limp and his belly is warm and tight. Qui-Gon nuzzles against him, feeling the heat and the muscles quivering beneath his lips.

“Qui, please, please,” he murmurs.

“Please what? Let you go?”

“No! No, I want your mouth around me. Suck me. Please.”

“Shhhhh,” he mouths to Obi-Wan’s quivering belly. “Shhhh, we’ve time for all of that. Let’s make it last.”

He closes a hand around Obi-Wan’s scrotum, which is high and tight against the base of his cock. Slowly and gently, Obi-Wan hissing and panting all the while—“a little like a teakettle,” Qui-Gon observes archly—he teases it loose and low again until he can heft the testicles. He runs his thumb lightly over the textured skin and rolls them in his hand, watching Obi-Wan shiver. Only then does he lick up the underside of Obi-Wan’s cock and tease the spot below the head with the tip of his tongue. Little pearls of fluid bubble from the slit. Qui-Gon licks them off and Obi-Wan’s hips buck up convulsively as he whimpers.

It is hard not to think of him making similar noises in that cell, but Qui-Gon pushes it out of his mind again, and concentrates instead on drawing noises of pleasure from him. Leaning down again, he takes one tender testicle in his mouth and sucks gently, rolling it across his tongue. Obi-Wan lets his head drop back and moans. The sound raises the hairs on Qui-Gon’s arms.

He leans over Obi-Wan and reaches into the drawer of their bedside table for the bottle of lubricant and liberally coats one finger, then strokes slowly up and down his perineum, just shy of the tight entrance to his body.

“Touch me! Please, touch me!” Obi-Wan whimpers.

“Like this?” Obi-Wan’s opening pulses beneath his circling finger. He tries to impale himself, but Qui-Gon pulls his hand away. To hinder him a little, Qui-Gon lifts one ankle onto his shoulder, and cups his buttock in one hand. “Slow down, love. Just feel,” he urges again. _Let the pleasure erase the pain you’ve been in,_ he thinks, though he knows it won’t. Only time can do that, if it is even possible. Obi-Wan makes a visible effort to relax. “You’re shaking.”

“I want you,” he whines. “Inside.”

“Is this what you want?” Qui-Gon pushes his finger inside, slowly, slowly, giving Obi-Wan the chance to stop him, to say no, to change his mind. The muscles of the ring clamp down around his finger and Obi-Wan cries out softly but doesn’t stop him. He turns his finger slowly inside the hot, tight passage, then curls it upward and rubs over Obi-Wan’s prostate. A shudder goes through him along with a guttural moan that makes Qui-Gon’s cock leap. “Yes!” he breathes. “Yes! Oh gods!” Qui-Gon begins to move his finger in and out.

“Yes!” Obi-Wan pants. “Yes, yes, yes. Just like that. Yes. Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t until he feels the muscle loosening, then he removes his finger and slicks two, again pushing slowly inside and curling both against Obi-Wan’s prostate with the same result.

“Your fingers are so big. I want another,” Obi-Wan pants. “I love this. I’d forgotten how much I love this.”

Qui-Gon has begun to shake himself, watching his lover. He stops for a moment then, with two fingers far inside, and takes a deep breath. It’s been so long and he wants Obi-Wan so badly that he fears pushing things along too quickly, hurting him, or worse, frightening him. With effort, he centers himself again and eases his own arousal down, and only then goes back to gently twisting his fingers.

“Your hands, Qui—I love your hands,” Obi-Wan moans. “So big. Love your fingers inside me.”

The muscle loosens slowly as Obi-Wan relaxes a little more himself, almost hypnotized by the sensations of pleasure. Just what Qui-Gon wants.

He tucks three fingers together, lubes them thoroughly and presses slowly inside. With a fascination newly rekindled, he watches the muscle flower open, watches his fingers slip inside with a shudder of his own, one Obi-Wan mirrors, writhing into his touch.

The bond turns smokey over the usual sweetness, but not metallic as it’s been before. Obi-Wan shudders hard and Qui-Gon lets his leg slip down. He rocks himself into Qui-Gon’s fingers with little moans. Qui-Gon leans over and takes his cock in hand, closing his mouth around the head and swiping his tongue over the crown. Obi-Wan tries to buck up, but Qui-Gon holds his pelvis down and slowly descends down the hard cock, until his nose rests in the ginger curls at its root. He rubs over his lover’s prostate again and swallows around him.

Obi-Wan goes utterly rigid but makes no sound, his orgasm is so intense. Qui-Gon’s heart jumps in sudden fear, but the bond is incandescent with Obi-Wan’s pleasure and Qui-Gon’s mouth fills with cum even as he pulls up and off and slips his fingers out. Beneath him, Obi-Wan is gasping and trembling and nearly unconscious. Qui-Gon leans down and kisses him, bringing his own taste back to him again. Obi-Wan moans into his mouth and pushes his tongue back in a languorous way, turning it to a slow, deep kiss that ends in soft pecks and nuzzling.

“Oh Qui. Oh gods. So good,” he mumbles when they break apart. His eyes flutter closed again and he sinks back onto the pillows with a sigh, already half-asleep. Qui-Gon unwraps the tie and lowers Obi-Wan’s arms, rubbing them lightly to get the circulation going again.

“You haven’t come yet,” Obi-Wan says sleepily, as Qui-Gon tosses the tie aside.

“I can wait,” he says, though his balls are tight and aching and he is uncomfortably hard.

Obi-Wan makes a visible effort to gather his wits. “Tell me what you want, Qui. I’m a bit limited in dexterity, but—”

Qui-Gon touches his lips with a finger. “Hush, _kosai_. I’m still making love to you. Turn over.” He shifts Obi-Wan’s hips until they lie back to front, the younger man nestling against him, sighing. Qui-Gon rubs his erection against the warm skin of Obi-Wan’s back and buttocks, and nuzzles into Obi-Wan’s hair as his hand strokes along his ribs and flank. Obi-Wan makes contented sounds and tangles their feet together as Qui-Gon kisses the back of his neck and nibbles his earlobe.

Before the younger man can fall asleep again, Qui-Gon lubes his own cock thoroughly and coats the ring of muscle at his entrance again. He lifts Obi-Wan’s top leg up, draping it over his own thigh, and guides himself inside slowly, until he is fully sheathed. Obi-Wan shivers and sighs and presses back against him. Qui-Gon pulls him back until they are once again nestling back to front, skin to skin. And then he moves. “That’s so good,” Obi-Wan murmurs. And it is. It’s glorious to be inside his lover again, to once again have that connection like no other. Qui-Gon wraps his fist around Obi-Wan’s half-hard cock and strokes in time with his own slow and gentle movements.

They rock into each other lazily, Qui-Gon adding kisses and nips, Obi-Wan sighing and murmuring appreciatively. The rhythm they set is comforting on a primal level.

Finally, Obi-Wan reaches back and strokes his splinted fingers along Qui-Gon’s hip. “Come for me, Qui. I want to feel you come inside me.”

Qui-Gon thrusts harder, one hand holding Obi-Wan’s hip, until he is pushing a grunt from his lover with each nudge to his prostate. All at once, the muscular ring around him pulses and that is enough to push Qui-Gon over the edge and into a lightning-struck orgasm of his own. The Force flares with a sense of rightness, filling him with ecstasy.

He comes back to himself as Obi-Wan’s body pushes him out, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and contentment that runs deep into the Force around them. His hand is sticky with the dribble of spunk from Obi-Wan’s second orgasm. He rubs it into his lover’s belly and pulls him tight, sighing contentedly into the sweaty hair at the nape of his neck. “Love you,” he says, lips pressed against damp skin. The relief he feels is more than the release of sexual tension. They’ve passed another milestone in Obi-Wan’s recovery.

“Love you, too,” Obi-Wan responds sleepily.

“All right?” Qui-Gon asks, unable to stop kissing his neck, inhaling the scents of sweat and lovemaking and the warmth of their bed and bodies. Obi-Wan nestles more tightly against him, his own hands overlaying Qui-Gon’s where they wrap around him. His lover seems to glow softly in the Force and Qui-Gon feels it humming—almost singing—gently inside him. There is nothing of the burnt or bitter taste left in their bond, though he knows this has not fixed everything.

“Mmm-hmm. Like starting over. Though I’m afraid your days of seducing me on the sofa in the common room are rather limited,” he adds with a trace of mischief. “Still, it feels like a new leaf.”

“Yes. A good beginning, I think. And the presence of your new padawan only means we’ll have to be more creative.”

Obi-Wan murmurs as they waft down into sleep together. “A very good beginning, love, with or without padawans.”


End file.
